Posted by Mark on June 3, 2012, 9:27 pm, in reply to "Re: fishing"68.189.88.142

The Mindís Games

by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems, Volume II, 1939-1962)

If a man can say of his life or any moment of his life, There is nothing more to be desired! his state becomes like that told in the famous double sonnet--but without the sonnetís restrictions. Let him go look at the river flowing or the bank of late flowers, there will be one small fly still among the petals in whose gauzy wings raised above its back a rainbow shines. The world to him is radiant and even the fact of poverty is wholly without despair.

So it seems until these rouse to him pictures of the systematically starved--for a purpose, at the mindís proposal. What good then the light winged fly, the flower or the river--too foul to drink of or even to bathe in? The 90 story building beyond the ocean that a rocket will span for destruction in a matter of minutes but will not bring him, in a century, food or relief of any sort from his suffering.

The world too much with us? Rot! the world is not half enough with us-- the rot of a potato with a healthy skin, a rot that is never revealed till we are about to eat--and it revolts us. Beauty? Beauty should make us paupers, should blind us, rob us--for it does not feed the sufferer but makes his suffering a fly-blown putrescence and ourselves decay--unless the ecstasy be general.